Jade paced the living room, wringing her hands together. He could almost hear her bones protesting the twists and turns she was causing in her slender fingers, but he didn’t say anything.
Instead, he took out his phone and queued up a song that always made her smile.
Granted,alwayswas a bit much.
Parker had known Jade for a week. Sure, in that short amount of time, they had spent hours and hours and hours together planning out Beach Day. But whenever Jade was overwhelmed, he played the same song for her.
The lyrics were sweet and encouraged the listener to not worry and be happy.
It worked like a charm at calming Jade down. She would start to sway to the music, smile broadly, clap her hands together and announce that she was ready to take on whatever challenges lay ahead.
She gave him a coy smile. “Thanks for playing that. How lame is it that after all of these years of planning, I still get all fluttery in my belly?”
“Because you care. Because you do good work, and you wanna make sure the people who show up have a good time. You don’t want them to think you phoned it in.” He closed the distance between them and placed his hands on her shoulders. He gave her a good squeeze and reveled at the sound of her breath catching. Her heart increased speed, and he wasn’t entirely sure she wouldn’t pass out.
He understood. He felt the same spike in adrenaline and all other kinds of hormones whenever they touched.
And in the last week, they had found more and more reasons to touch each other.
“You never phone anything in, sunshine. Ever. You planned the hell out of this day, and sure this time around, your partner was new at the whole planning thing, but I happen to think that we make one hell of a team. We did good. It’s gonna be great.”
Parker was going to let her go, but then his body decided that it would be a great fucking idea to lean over and press his lips to her forehead.
“It’ll be fun,” he promised. “Everything is good and ready to go. All we need to do is drive down to the beach and start the music, cut that ribbon, and let the magic take care of itself.”
“Yeah,” she breathed, closing her eyes. “Yeah. You’re right. Of course, you’re right. I don’t have to be such a neurotic mess. We’ve got everything covered.”
“Yup. Now, come on. We need to get this show on the road.”
He didn’t stop the song but slid his phone into his back pocket, where it continued to play as they made their way out of his cabin and to his car. Parker opened the passenger door for her before settling into the driver’s seat just as the song ended.
He turned the key to start the engine, but nothing happened.Shit.
“Okay, Jade,” he turned in his seat to face her. “Remember that everything is okay.”
“What’s wrong?” All of the color drained from her face.
“Well, the car won’t start. I can only imagine that’s because the Half Moon Key grid is down.”
She let out a slow breath and closed her eyes. “It’s fine. It’s totally fine. We planned for this.”
Then, that side of Jade that fascinated him clicked on.
She hopped out of the car, clapped her hands together, took off her flip-flops, and started walking down his laneway.
“We’re walking,” she announced. “Too bad we can’t play that song on repeat, but no matter! We are gonna sing and dance our way to Main Street regardless.”
“You got it.”
Parker fell into step beside her, and he had to stuff his hands into the pockets of his shorts to keep from reaching out to hold her hand. They hummed the song all the way.
They were on their way into the belly of the beast … so to speak. Holding hands would only get the rumor mill started, and Jade didn’t need that today.
“We have a backup plan for the food. Those kids from the band are gonna play acoustic songs to get the party started. It’ll all be okay.”
“Exactly. You planned for this to happen. Youknewthis would happen.”
She took a deep breath. “You always have to plan for the electricity to go down out here. It’ll be fine. People can’t blame me for this.”